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Facebook Now Making $0.80 Per Mobile User

Facebook released new country-specific active user counts earlier today. It offered figures for the US and UK, saying that other countries would release them at their discretion. What these data show is that 79 percent of Facebook’s daily active users are mobile in the US, with 83 percent mobile in the UK.

These are the most engaged users of Facebook. The numbers reflect that already a very high proportion of the daily active user base in the US and UK is mobile — though mobile penetration rates will still probably creep up.

During the past 12 months, mobile has become a larger and larger driver of revenue for the company. Below is a comparison of overall Facebook revenue, advertising revenue and mobile ad revenue growth over the past year.

The mobile ad revenue figure for Q2 ’12 is my estimate; Facebook had yet to start disclosing mobile ad revenue numbers at that point. All the other numbers are drawn from Facebook’s publicly released data.

Facebook’s mobile revenues have gone from less than 10 percent of total ad revenue to 41 percent in the space of one year, which is a remarkable story. This is based on the rapid growth of Facebook’s mobile user base and the exposure of more and more ads in Facebook’s mobile apps.

Based on some simple math, Facebook made roughly $0.80 per mobile user in Q2. That’s up from $0.50 in Q1 of this year.

Mobile monetization and revenue per user are going to vary by country, however. These are simple averages across the entire mobile user base. But, I suspect that Q3 ’13 earnings will show a per-user mobile ad revenue figure of $1 or perhaps slightly more.

Facebook should thus hit $1 billion or more in quarterly mobile ad revenue by early next year (by Q1 2014). The company would then be at a $4 billion (or so) annual mobile-ad run rate.

Given the high mobile penetration rates in the US and UK among daily Facebook users there’s not a ton of room for additional growth. However Facebook can potentially generate more mobile ad revenue by increasing ad rates (either by fiat or through competition) and improving performance through targeting and relevancy.

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About The Author

Greg Sterling is a Contributing Editor at Search Engine Land. He writes a personal blog, Screenwerk, about connecting the dots between digital media and real-world consumer behavior. He is also VP of Strategy and Insights for the Local Search Association. Follow him on Twitter or find him at Google+.